Chapter 9

The sky was all pallid again, yellowish. When I went out there was no sun; the snow was blue and cold. I hurried away down the hill, musing on Maggie. The road made a loop down the sharp face of the slope. As I went crunching over the laborious snow I became aware of a figure striding down the steep scarp to intercept me. It was a man with his hands in front of him, half stuck in his breeches pockets, and his shoulders square—a real farmer of the hills; Alfred, of course. He waited for me by the stone fence.

“Excuse me,” he said as I came up.

I came to a halt in front of him and looked into his sullen blue eyes. He had a certain odd haughtiness on his brows. But his blue eyes stared insolently at me.

“Do you know anything about a letter—in French—that my wife opened—a letter of mine—?”

“Yes,” said I. “She asked me to read it to her.”

He looked square at me. He did not know exactly how to feel.

“What was there in it?” he asked.

“Why?” I said. “Don’t you know?”

“She makes out she’s burnt it,” he said.

“Without showing it you?” I asked.

He nodded slightly. He seemed to be meditating as to what line of action he should take. He wanted to know the contents of the letter: he must know: and therefore he must ask me, for evidently his wife had taunted him. At the same time, no doubt, he would like to wreak untold vengeance on my unfortunate person. So he eyed me, and I eyed him, and neither of us spoke. He did not want to repeat his request to me. And yet I only looked at him, and considered.

Suddenly he threw back his head and glanced down the valley. Then he changed his position—he was a horse-soldier. Then he looked at me confidentially.

“She burnt the blasted thing before I saw it,” he said.

“Well,” I answered slowly, “she doesn’t know herself what was in it.”

He continued to watch me narrowly. I grinned to myself.

“I didn’t like to read her out what there was in it,” I continued.

He suddenly flushed so that the veins in his neck stood out, and he stirred again uncomfortably.

“The Belgian girl said her baby had been born a week ago, and that they were going to call it Alfred,” I told him.

He met my eyes. I was grinning. He began to grin, too.

“Good luck to her,” he said.

“Best of luck,” said I.

“And what did you tell _her_?” he asked.

“That the baby belonged to the old mother—that it was brother to your girl, who was writing to you as a friend of the family.”

He stood smiling, with the long, subtle malice of a farmer.

“And did she take it in?” he asked.

“As much as she took anything else.”

He stood grinning fixedly. Then he broke into a short laugh.

“Good for _her_” he exclaimed cryptically.

And then he laughed aloud once more, evidently feeling he had won a big move in his contest with his wife.

“What about the other woman?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Élise.”

“Oh”—he shifted uneasily—“she was all right—”

“You’ll be getting back to her,” I said.

He looked at me. Then he made a grimace with his mouth.

“Not me,” he said. “Back your life it’s a plant.”

“You don’t think the _cher petit bébé_ is a little Alfred?”

“It might be,” he said.

“Only might?”

“Yes—an’ there’s lots of mites in a pound of cheese.” He laughed boisterously but uneasily.

“What did she say, exactly?” he asked.

I began to repeat, as well as I could, the phrases of the letter:

“_Mon cher Alfred— Figure-toi comme je suis desolée_—”

He listened with some confusion. When I had finished all I could remember, he said:

“They know how to pitch you out a letter, those Belgian lasses.”

“Practice,” said I.

“They get plenty,” he said.

There was a pause.

“Oh, well,” he said. “I’ve never got that letter, anyhow.”

The wind blew fine and keen, in the sunshine, across the snow. I blew my nose and prepared to depart.

“And _she_ doesn’t know anything?” he continued, jerking his head up the hill in the direction of Tible.

“She knows nothing but what I’ve said—that is, if she really burnt the letter.”

“I believe she burnt it,” he said, “for spite. She’s a little devil, she is. But I shall have it out with her.” His jaw was stubborn and sullen. Then suddenly he turned to me with a new note.

“Why?” he said. “Why didn’t you wring that b—— peacock’s neck—that b—— Joey?”

“Why?” I said. “What for?”

“I hate the brute,” he said. “I had a shot at him—”

I laughed. He stood and mused.

“Poor little Élise,” he murmured.

“Was she small—_petite_?” I asked. He jerked up his head.

“No,” he said. “Rather tall.”

“Taller than your wife, I suppose.”

Again he looked into my eyes. And then once more he went into a loud burst of laughter that made the still, snow-deserted valley clap again.

“God, it’s a knockout!” he said, thoroughly amused. Then he stood at ease, one foot out, his hands in his breeches pockets, in front of him, his head thrown back, a handsome figure of a man.

“But I’ll do that blasted Joey in—” he mused.

I ran down the hill, shouting with laughter.

YOU TOUCHED ME

The Pottery House was a square, ugly, brick house girt in by the wall that enclosed the whole grounds of the pottery itself. To be sure, a privet hedge partly masked the house and its ground from the pottery-yard and works: but only partly. Through the hedge could be seen the desolate yard, and the many-windowed, factory-like pottery, over the hedge could be seen the chimneys and the outhouses. But inside the hedge, a pleasant garden and lawn sloped down to a willow pool, which had once supplied the works.

The Pottery itself was now closed, the great doors of the yard permanently shut. No more the great crates with yellow straw showing through, stood in stacks by the packing shed. No more the drays drawn by great horses rolled down the hill with a high load. No more the pottery-lasses in their clay-coloured overalls, their faces and hair splashed with grey fine mud, shrieked and larked with the men. All that was over.

“We like it much better—oh, much better—quieter,” said Matilda Rockley.

“Oh, yes,” assented Emmie Rockley, her sister.

“I’m sure you do,” agreed the visitor.

But whether the two Rockley girls really liked it better, or whether they only imagined they did, is a question. Certainly their lives were much more grey and dreary now that the grey clay had ceased to spatter its mud and silt its dust over the premises. They did not quite realise how they missed the shrieking, shouting lasses, whom they had known all their lives and disliked so much.

Matilda and Emmie were already old maids. In a thorough industrial district, it is not easy for the girls who have expectations above the common to find husbands. The ugly industrial town was full of men, young men who were ready to marry. But they were all colliers or pottery-hands, mere workmen. The Rockley girls would have about ten thousand pounds each when their father died: ten thousand pounds’ worth of profitable house-property. It was not to be sneezed at: they felt so themselves, and refrained from sneezing away such a fortune on any mere member of the proletariat. Consequently, bank-clerks or nonconformist clergymen or even school-teachers having failed to come forward, Matilda had begun to give up all idea of ever leaving the Pottery House.

Matilda was a tall, thin, graceful fair girl, with a rather large nose. She was the Mary to Emmie’s Martha: that is, Matilda loved painting and music, and read a good many novels, whilst Emmie looked after the house-keeping. Emmie was shorter, plumper than her sister, and she had no accomplishments. She looked up to Matilda, whose mind was naturally refined and sensible.

In their quiet, melancholy way, the two girls were happy. Their mother was dead. Their father was ill also. He was an intelligent man who had had some education, but preferred to remain as if he were one with the rest of the working people. He had a passion for music and played the violin pretty well. But now he was getting old, he was very ill, dying of a kidney disease. He had been rather a heavy whisky-drinker.

This quiet household, with one servant-maid, lived on year after year in the Pottery House. Friends came in, the girls went out, the father drank himself more and more ill. Outside in the street there was a continual racket of the colliers and their dogs and children. But inside the pottery wall was a deserted quiet.

In all this ointment there was one little fly. Ted Rockley, the father of the girls, had had four daughters, and no son. As his girls grew, he felt angry at finding himself always in a house-hold of women. He went off to London and adopted a boy out of a Charity Institution. Emmie was fourteen years old, and Matilda sixteen, when their father arrived home with his prodigy, the boy of six, Hadrian.

Hadrian was just an ordinary boy from a Charity Home, with ordinary brownish hair and ordinary bluish eyes and of ordinary rather cockney speech. The Rockley girls—there were three at home at the time of his arrival—had resented his being sprung on them. He, with his watchful, charity-institution instinct, knew this at once. Though he was only six years old, Hadrian had a subtle, jeering look on his face when he regarded the three young women. They insisted he should address them as Cousin: Cousin Flora, Cousin Matilda, Cousin Emmie. He complied, but there seemed a mockery in his tone.

The girls, however, were kind-hearted by nature. Flora married and left home. Hadrian did very much as he pleased with Matilda and Emmie, though they had certain strictnesses. He grew up in the Pottery House and about the Pottery premises, went to an elementary school, and was invariably called Hadrian Rockley. He regarded Cousin Matilda and Cousin Emmie with a certain laconic indifference, was quiet and reticent in his ways. The girls called him sly, but that was unjust. He was merely cautious, and without frankness. His Uncle, Ted Rockley, understood him tacitly, their natures were somewhat akin. Hadrian and the elderly man had a real but unemotional regard for one another.

When he was thirteen years old the boy was sent to a High School in the County town. He did not like it. His Cousin Matilda had longed to make a little gentleman of him, but he refused to be made. He would give a little contemptuous curve to his lip, and take on a shy, charity-boy grin, when refinement was thrust upon him. He played truant from the High School, sold his books, his cap with its badge, even his very scarf and pocket-handkerchief, to his school-fellows, and went raking off heaven knows where with the money. So he spent two very unsatisfactory years.

When he was fifteen he announced that he wanted to leave England and go to the Colonies. He had kept touch with the Home. The Rockleys knew that, when Hadrian made a declaration, in his quiet, half-jeering manner, it was worse than useless to oppose him. So at last the boy departed, going to Canada under the protection of the Institution to which he had belonged. He said good-bye to the Rockleys without a word of thanks, and parted, it seemed, without a pang. Matilda and Emmie wept often to think of how he left them: even on their father’s face a queer look came. But Hadrian wrote fairly regularly from Canada. He had entered some electricity works near Montreal, and was doing well.

At last, however, the war came. In his turn, Hadrian joined up and came to Europe. The Rockleys saw nothing of him. They lived on, just the same, in the Pottery House. Ted Rockley was dying of a sort of dropsy, and in his heart he wanted to see the boy. When the armistice was signed, Hadrian had a long leave, and wrote that he was coming home to the Pottery House.

The girls were terribly fluttered. To tell the truth, they were a little afraid of Hadrian. Matilda, tall and thin, was frail in her health, both girls were worn with nursing their father. To have Hadrian, a young man of twenty-one, in the house with them, after he had left them so coldly five years before, was a trying circumstance.

They were in a flutter. Emmie persuaded her father to have his bed made finally in the morning-room downstairs, whilst his room upstairs was prepared for Hadrian. This was done, and preparations were going on for the arrival, when, at ten o’clock in the morning the young man suddenly turned up, quite unexpectedly. Cousin Emmie, with her hair bobbed up in absurd little bobs round her forehead, was busily polishing the stair-rods, while Cousin Matilda was in the kitchen washing the drawing-room ornaments in a lather, her sleeves rolled back on her thin arms, and her head tied up oddly and coquettishly in a duster.

Cousin Matilda blushed deep with mortification when the self-possessed young man walked in with his kit-bag, and put his cap on the sewing machine. He was little and self-confident, with a curious neatness about him that still suggested the Charity Institution. His face was brown, he had a small moustache, he was vigorous enough in his smallness.

“_Well_, is it Hadrian!” exclaimed Cousin Matilda, wringing the lather off her hand. “We didn’t expect you till tomorrow.”

“I got off Monday night,” said Hadrian, glancing round the room.

“Fancy!” said Cousin Matilda. Then, having dried her hands, she went forward, held out her hand, and said:

“How are you?”

“Quite well, thank you,” said Hadrian.

“You’re quite a man,” said Cousin Matilda.

Hadrian glanced at her. She did not look her best: so thin, so large-nosed, with that pink-and-white checked duster tied round her head. She felt her disadvantage. But she had had a good deal of suffering and sorrow, she did not mind any more.

The servant entered—one that did not know Hadrian.

“Come and see my father,” said Cousin Matilda.

In the hall they roused Cousin Emmie like a partridge from cover. She was on the stairs pushing the bright stair-rods into place. Instinctively her hand went to the little knobs, her front hair bobbed on her forehead.

“Why!” she exclaimed, crossly. “What have you come today for?”

“I got off a day earlier,” said Hadrian, and his man’s voice so deep and unexpected was like a blow to Cousin Emmie.

“Well, you’ve caught us in the midst of it,” she said, with resentment. Then all three went into the middle room.

Mr. Rockley was dressed—that is, he had on his trousers and socks—but he was resting on the bed, propped up just under the window, from whence he could see his beloved and resplendent garden, where tulips and apple-trees were ablaze. He did not look as ill as he was, for the water puffed him up, and his face kept its colour. His stomach was much swollen. He glanced round swiftly, turning his eyes without turning his head. He was the wreck of a handsome, well-built man.

Seeing Hadrian, a queer, unwilling smile went over his face. The young man greeted him sheepishly.

“You wouldn’t make a life-guardsman,” he said. “Do you want something to eat?”

Hadrian looked round—as if for the meal.

“I don’t mind,” he said.

“What shall you have—egg and bacon?” asked Emmie shortly.

“Yes, I don’t mind,” said Hadrian.

The sisters went down to the kitchen, and sent the servant to finish the stairs.

“Isn’t he _altered_?” said Matilda, _sotto voce_.

“Isn’t he!” said Cousin Emmie. “_What_ a little man!”

They both made a grimace, and laughed nervously.

“Get the frying-pan,” said Emmie to Matilda.

“But he’s as cocky as ever,” said Matilda, narrowing her eyes and shaking her head knowingly, as she handed the frying-pan.

“Mannie!” said Emmie sarcastically. Hadrian’s new-fledged, cock-sure manliness evidently found no favour in her eyes.

“Oh, he’s not bad,” said Matilda. “You don’t want to be prejudiced against him.”

I’m not prejudiced against him, I think he’s all right for looks,” said Emmie, “but there’s too much of the little mannie about him.”

“Fancy catching us like this,” said Matilda.

“They’ve no thought for anything,” said Emmie with contempt. “You go up and get dressed, our Matilda. I don’t care about him. I can see to things, and you can talk to him. I shan’t.”

“He’ll talk to my father,” said Matilda, meaningful.

“_Sly—!_” exclaimed Emmie, with a grimace.

The sisters believed that Hadrian had come hoping to get something out of their father—hoping for a legacy. And they were not at all sure he would not get it.

Matilda went upstairs to change. She had thought it all out how she would receive Hadrian, and impress him. And he had caught her with her head tied up in a duster, and her thin arms in a basin of lather. But she did not care. She now dressed herself most scrupulously, carefully folded her long, beautiful, blonde hair, touched her pallor with a little rouge, and put her long string of exquisite crystal beads over her soft green dress. Now she looked elegant, like a heroine in a magazine illustration, and almost as unreal.

She found Hadrian and her father talking away. The young man was short of speech as a rule, but he could find his tongue with his “uncle”. They were both sipping a glass of brandy, and smoking, and chatting like a pair of old cronies. Hadrian was telling about Canada. He was going back there when his leave was up.

“You wouldn’t like to stop in England, then?” said Mr. Rockley.

“No, I wouldn’t stop in England,” said Hadrian.

“How’s that? There’s plenty of electricians here,” said Mr. Rockley.

“Yes. But there’s too much difference between the men and the employers over here—too much of that for me,” said Hadrian.

The sick man looked at him narrowly, with oddly smiling eyes.

“That’s it, is it?” he replied.

Matilda heard and understood. “So that’s your big idea, is it, my little man,” she said to herself. She had always said of Hadrian that he had no proper _respect_ for anybody or anything, that he was sly and _common_. She went down to the kitchen for a _sotto voce_ confab with Emmie.

“He thinks a rare lot of himself!” she whispered.

“He’s somebody, he is!” said Emmie with contempt.

“He thinks there’s too much difference between masters and men, over here,” said Matilda.

“Is it any different in Canada?” asked Emmie.

“Oh, yes—democratic,” replied Matilda, “He thinks they’re all on a level over there.”

“Ay, well he’s over here now,” said Emmie dryly, “so he can keep his place.”

As they talked they saw the young man sauntering down the garden, looking casually at the flowers. He had his hands in his pockets, and his soldier’s cap neatly on his head. He looked quite at his ease, as if in possession. The two women, fluttered, watched him through the window.

“We know what he’s come for,” said Emmie, churlishly. Matilda looked a long time at the neat khaki figure. It had something of the charity-boy about it still; but now it was a man’s figure, laconic, charged with plebeian energy. She thought of the derisive passion in his voice as he had declaimed against the propertied classes, to her father.

“You don’t know, Emmie. Perhaps he’s not come for that,” she rebuked her sister. They were both thinking of the money.

They were still watching the young soldier. He stood away at the bottom of the garden, with his back to them, his hands in his pockets, looking into the water of the willow pond. Matilda’s dark-blue eyes had a strange, full look in them, the lids, with the faint blue veins showing, dropped rather low. She carried her head light and high, but she had a look of pain. The young man at the bottom of the garden turned and looked up the path. Perhaps he saw them through the window. Matilda moved into shadow.

That afternoon their father seemed weak and ill. He was easily exhausted. The doctor came, and told Matilda that the sick man might die suddenly at any moment—but then he might not. They must be prepared.

So the day passed, and the next. Hadrian made himself at home. He went about in the morning in his brownish jersey and his khaki trousers, collarless, his bare neck showing. He explored the pottery premises, as if he had some secret purpose in so doing, he talked with Mr. Rockley, when the sick man had strength. The two girls were always angry when the two men sat talking together like cronies. Yet it was chiefly a kind of politics they talked.

On the second day after Hadrian’s arrival, Matilda sat with her father in the evening. She was drawing a picture which she wanted to copy. It was very still, Hadrian was gone out somewhere, no one knew where, and Emmie was busy. Mr. Rockley reclined on his bed, looking out in silence over his evening-sunny garden.

“If anything happens to me, Matilda,” he said, “you won’t sell this house—you’ll stop here—”

Matilda’s eyes took their slightly haggard look as she stared at her father.

“Well, we couldn’t do anything else,” she said.

“You don’t know what you might do,” he said. “Everything is left to you and Emmie, equally. You’do as you like with it—only don’t sell this house, don’t part with it.”

“No,” she said.

“And give Hadrian my watch and chain, and a hundred pounds out of what’s in the bank—and help him if he ever wants helping. I haven’t put his name in the will.”

“Your watch and chain, and a hundred pounds—yes. But you’ll be here when he goes back to Canada, father.”

“You never know what’ll happen,” said her father.

Matilda sat and watched him, with her full, haggard eyes, for a long time, as if tranced. She saw that he knew he must go soon—she saw like a clairvoyant.

Later on she told Emmie what her father had said about the watch and chain and the money.

“What right has _he”—he_—meaning Hadrian—“to my father’s watch and chain—what has it to do with him? Let him have the money, and get off,” said Emmie. She loved her father.

That night Matilda sat late in her room. Her heart was anxious and breaking, her mind seemed entranced. She was too much entranced even to weep, and all the time she thought of her father, only her father. At last she felt she must go to him.

It was near midnight. She went along the passage and to his room. There was a faint light from the moon outside. She listened at his door. Then she softly opened and entered. The room was faintly dark. She heard a movement on the bed.

“Are you asleep?” she said softly, advancing to the side of the bed.

“Are you asleep?” she repeated gently, as she stood at the side of the bed. And she reached her hand in the darkness to touch his forehead. Delicately, her fingers met the nose and the eyebrows, she laid her fine, delicate hand on his brow. It seemed fresh and smooth—very fresh and smooth. A sort of surprise stirred her, in her entranced state. But it could not waken her. Gently, she leaned over the bed and stirred her fingers over the low-growing hair on his brow.

“Can’t you sleep tonight?” she said.

There was a quick stirring in the bed. “Yes, I can,” a voice answered. It was Hadrian’s voice. She started away. Instantly, she was wakened from her late-at-night trance. She remembered that her father was downstairs, that Hadrian had his room. She stood in the darkness as if stung.

“It is you, Hadrian?” she said. “I thought it was my father.” She was so startled, so shocked, that she could not move. The young man gave an uncomfortable laugh, and turned in his bed.

At last she got out of the room. When she was back in her own room, in the light, and her door was closed, she stood holding up her hand that had touched him, as if it were hurt. She was almost too shocked, she could not endure.

“Well,” said her calm and weary mind, “it was only a mistake, why take any notice of it.”

But she could not reason her feelings so easily. She suffered, feeling herself in a false position. Her right hand, which she had laid so gently on his face, on his fresh skin, ached now, as if it were really injured. She could not forgive Hadrian for the mistake: it made her dislike him deeply.